And so to Virginia came . . .
What they found when they came to Virginia was dolor enough. On Jamestown
strand they beheld sixty skeletons "who had eaten all the quick things that
weare there, and some of them had eaten snakes and adders." Somers, Gates,
and Newport, on entering the town, found it "rather as the ruins of some
auntient fortification than that any people living might now inhabit it."
A pitiable outcome, this, of all the hopes of fair "harbours and
habitations," of golden dreams, and farflung dominion. All those whom
Raleigh had sent to Roanoke were lost or had perished. Those who had named
and had first dwelled in Jamestown were in number about a hundred. To these
had been added, during the first year or so, perhaps two hundred more. And
the ships that had parted from the Sea Adventure had brought in three
hundred. First and last, not far from seven hundred English folk had come
to live in Virginia. And these skeletons eating snakes and adders were all
that remained of that company; all those others had died miserably and
their hopes were ashes with them.
What might Sir Thomas Gates, the Governor, do? "That which added most to
his sorowe, and not a little startled him, was the impossibilitie. . how to
amend one whitt of this. His forces were not of habilitie to revenge upon
the Indian, nor his owne supply (now brought from the Bermudas) sufficient
to relieve his people." So he called a Council and listened in turn to Sir
George Somers, to Christopher Newport, and to "the gentlemen and Counsaile
of the former Government.
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